OKLAHOMA CITY -- International softball leaders will continue to explore a possible joint bid with baseball to try and get both sports back into the Olympics in 2020.
Representatives from about 70 countries attended the International Softball Federation Congress in Oklahoma City this weekend and approved a resolution to move forward with talks with the International Baseball Federation.
"We've got a long ways to go yet," ISF President Don E. Porter said Sunday. "I think it's just right now it's an expression of, `Yes, we want to explore the possibility to move ahead with it."
Porter said the group still doesn't have clarity from the International Olympic Committee on the guidelines for submitting a combined bid between two similar sports that still have plenty of differences in their rules. He and ISF Secretary-General Low Beng Choo of Malaysia hope to meet with IOC officials in the next month or so to find out.
"It's not a unanimous thing either way but we wanted to give everybody a chance to really air it out and see how people felt about it," Porter said.
"Now, we're going to push ahead and see if we think that's going to work. The IOC's still got to say you can do it or you can't do it, or what you need to do."
Porter has expressed concerns, shared by other softball leaders, that entering a bid as women's baseball could jeopardize the sport's identity.
In its last bid to get reinstated to the Olympics, softball focused its case on a lack of problems with steroids or doping, an ability to bring the sport's top players from around the world and additional opportunities for women -- all ways to distinguish itself from baseball.
Now, the two sports are considering working together because neither will be in the London Games next year or the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.
"We still need to have a lot of discussion and meeting because if you want to put up a proposal, you need to agree on certain things," Low said.
It won't be until 2013 -- after the IOC decides whether to drop any sports that are contested in London -- that softball and baseball make their case to get back in.
But the sports are already must consider what angles they'll use to convince the IOC they are deserving of another chance.
The first step is hearing from softball federations around the world what tactic they believe is best.
"That was why it was important for us to give the members a chance to speak at the forum, so that at least we know and hear from them because every federation is different, every country is different, every level of development is different," Low said.
The congress also awarded the 2014 women's world championships to the Netherlands and the 2015 men's world championships to Canada.
